Yet Another Trip to the Hospital

Yes, you read that correctly.  We were in the hospital with LB.  Again.  That's twice in two weeks if you're keeping track.  No fun at all.  We are very ready for cold/flu/gastrointestinal nastiness season to be O.V.E.R!

This bug started on Thursday afternoon.  LB had been doing just fine all day.  I picked him up from the sitter.  She told me he ate well, napped well and had just finished a 4 oz bottle at 3:30.  We loaded into the car, drove 5 minutes home, unloaded from the car and were taking off jackets when Husband announces that LB just threw up in the hallway.  He has never vomited before, but he spits up a lot (just like our older son did when he was a baby...hence why all of the baby pictures of our boys have them wearing bibs...usually wet ones), so I was surprised.  Sure enough, there was LB sitting in a pool of vomit.  Gross.

Vomiting is something that's very dangerous with MCADD because the food doesn't get digested and he is essentially fasting (which is bad).  I called the sitter to double check when his last meal was before 3:30 because now we couldn't count the 3:30 feeding since it had just puddled in our hallway.  She said he ate his last bottle at 11:15, just before he ate some solid food for lunch.  It had now been a little over 5 hours since his last meal.  We were good for another 3 hours, but that meant he had to keep down his next feeding.

Thinking it may have been a fluke, we made a bottle for him and he prompty threw it up.  We waited another 30 minutes, tried again and he threw that up so we called the metabolic clinic.  They told us to start his polycose solution.  He needed to eat 0.5 ounces of polycose every 15 minutes for the next hour in order to stay in the clear and we needed to call them back in an hour to let them know how he was doing.

In the next hour, he drank a whopping total of 0.25 ounces of polycose and threw up 3 more times.  We were already packing our hospital bag when we called the metabolic clinic back.  It was about 7 pm when we got everyone into the car.  We left a key with the neighbors to let the dog out in the morning and we changed our older son into his jammies and dropped him off for a sleepover night with his sitter (at his choice -- we asked him if he wanted her to come over to sit with him for awhile or if he wanted to go sleep at her house and he wanted to go there).  This ended up working out nicely because this meant Husband could stay the night with us and since our plan was to go directly to Children's Hospital to avoid another IV incident like we had at the other, closer hospital, it was going to be about twice as far for Husband to run back and forth from the hospital to home.


When we got to the hospital, I was a little worried because there was a waiting room FULL of sick kids waiting to be seen.  Thankfully, as we were getting checked in with the desk, they already had LB's file ready and the metabolic clinic had already called ahead to let them know we were on our way.  After getting checked in and giving them our emergency letter, we sat in the waiting room for less than 5 minutes before we were called back.  This was good because it was already after 8 pm and it was rapidly approaching 8 hours since LB's last feeding (and he can only go 8 hours without eating when he's well anyway). 

We were seen by the doctor quickly and the IV situation was much improved at this hospital.  The nurses were able to draw bloodwork with the first poke (his inner elbow), but weren't able to advance the catheter to start the IV at that site.  They poked him a second time (left hand) and the IV was flowing.  Not bad.  Now, LB just had to keep up his end of the deal -- stop vomiting and start eating. 

Unfortunately, the second part proved a bit more difficult.  He was still vomiting in the ER and he wasn't very excited about drinking anything (do you blame him?).  So, within a couple hours of walking through the door, we were admitted.  It's a good thing I packed extra clothes this time because all of the vomit was landing right on me.  The vomit was all polycose (which is essentially sugar water), so as it dried, it was like I had patches of heavily starched clothing that was stiff as a board.

Overnight was a bit better.  The anti-nausea drugs they were giving him through the IV quelled the vomiting and he was eating a little bit every couple of hours.  I sat holding LB in a recliner.  Husband stretched out on a very uncomfortable couch.  The nurses woke us every couple hours, but that was a good thing.  We were both so tired, I'm sure I would have slept through any alarm I would have set.

In the morning, we were seen by a gaggle of pediatric residents (they literally have 8 people on a team since it is a teaching hospital and all 8 of them crammed into our room to chat with us) and a doctor from LB's metabolic clinic.  They all agreed that as long as he was eating 2/3 of what he normally does and didn't have anymore vomiting or start having any diarrhea, we would be going home that day.  He had likely caught another gastrointestinal illness and it would work its way though his system just like the others had done.  As long as he was eating, he would be fine.

By mid-day, LB was going about 100 mph.  He wanted to play.  He wanted to crawl (which he couldn't do on the hospital floor -- ick!).  He wanted to pull on that thing that was attached to his left hand.  Keeping him from tugging on the IV was very difficult this time because it was so accessible by being in his hand.  He was chewing on it, tugging on it, trying to use that hand even though it was splinted...  Needless to say, at about 1 p.m. I noticed his splint was sopping wet. It was too wet for it to be just from him sucking on it when we weren't looking (trust me, we were looking about 99.9% of the time), so I called in the nurses to take a look at it.  Sure enough, he had dislodged something and as they were attempting to salvage it, he was squirming around so much that they lost it.  No more IV. 

However, when the docs came back to check on us they were unconcerned about the IV.  They wanted to see him eating solely on his own at this point anyway and we were on target to get out of there by dinnertime.  We stopped at the pharmacy to fill his prescription for more anti-nausea drugs (just in case he started vomiting again) and were on our way home.

We picked up our older son first thing and he was very happy to see us and he told us about how much fun he had sleeping at his sitters house.  We had forgotten to pack his toothpaste, so he told us about how her toothpaste tasted different.  That was the extent of his "trauma" from this experience.  He was fine...until he wasnt.

Last night, he started vomiting.  LB was on the mend and now his big brother was just getting started.  Oh well, back to toast and gatorade for us again.  At least we're home.

Husband and I have been wracking our brains trying to figure out how the kids keep getting sick like this. Sure there has been a lot of talk on the news lately about flu and nora-virus outbreaks in the area, but we literally haven't left the house since Christmas.  We have been to ZERO public places...except for church.  We went to church the Sunday before each illness started.  As much as it pains me to say it, in the interest of keeping ourselves AWAY from the hospital for the rest of this unprecendented season of viruses, we are going to start avoiding all crowds for the foreseeable future, including church.  Two hospitalizations in two weeks and three in the last three months is plenty.  I have no plans of adding to that total anytime soon.